A blogger well known for her stance on body image issues, as well as her own experience with body dysmorphia, has petitioned Francesca Bellettini, CEO of Yves Saint Laurent, to stop using painfully thin models in its campaigns.

Shannon Bradley-Colleary, a 48-year-old mother of two pre-teen daughters, was outraged when she stumbled across a Saint Laurent Paris ad campaign in Vanity Fair last month, starring what appears to her to be a severely 'malnourished' model.

'My first reaction was, what the hell?' she writes on her blog The Woman Formally Known As Beautiful, labeling the image 'cruel', both to the model 'if she isn't naturally thin', and to the young girls who will be exposed to it.

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Too thin? Blogger Shannon Bradley-Colleary was shocked to see this model in a Saint Laurent Paris campaign (pictured) and has petitioned the label's CEO, Francesca Bellettini, to stop using 'malnourished' models

Mrs Bradley-Colleary argues that inevitably, some women 'of a certain age' will begin to believe that this is 'the standard of beauty.' She goes on to point out that less two per cent of all women (and men) in the U.S. are genetically inclined to be this thin naturally.

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'This means 98 per cent of women would have to deprive themselves in order to achieve this look,' she laments.

Inspired by a 16-year-old girl who successfully petitioned Seventeen Magazine to stop Photoshopping their models, Mrs Bradley-Colleary launched her own on Change.org, and quickly amassed over 40,000 signatures.

'We request that you stop using images
depicting models who may be malnourished or have a dangerously low BMI,'
the petition reads.

High fashion: Mrs Bradley-Colleary considers the images 'cruel' both to the model (pictured in another shot from the same campaign) and to the impressionable girls who are exposed to it

It goes on to suggest that booking these girls is sending a message to other models that they have to be 'uber thin to get work' and to lead young girls and women into 'serious eating disorders', some of which may result in death. A representative for Yves Saint Laurent was unavailable for comment when contacted by MailOnline.

Mrs Bradley-Colleary is already known for her vocal stance on issues surrounding body image. In 2012, at the age of 46, she stripped down to recreate a nude photo shoot she had taken part in some 20 years ago, posting the images from both side-by-side, along with her own surprised reaction.

'Who is that fat, dimpled, wrinkly, broad-flanked person? That isn't me? That can't be me??!!' she wrote in her piece for the Huffington Post.

She
later made her peace with her age-morphed body shape and is evidently
now keen to make changes to the industry she believes, in part, spawned
her negative self-image.

Naked ambition: Mrs Bradley-Colleary posed nude at 25 when she hated her body (left) and again at 46 (right) and was herself horrified by the more
recent photographs

The passage of time: The mother-of-two has since accepted the skin she lives in but is trying to make changes to the industry she feels prompted her body dimorphic disorder in the first place

It's not a belief shared by fellow blogger - and incidental friend - Jenni Chiu, who penned a rebuttal to Mrs Bradley-Colleary's petition, which was later published on the Huffington Post, entitled, Don't Make the Thin Girl Ugly.

'My problem is that we don't know that
this young woman is actually anorexic,' she writes. 'Isn’t assuming all
skinny girls are anorexic just as bad as assuming all bigger girls are
unhealthy?'

Ms Chiu, also a
mother of two, and a former self-confessed member of the two per cent
elite, claims she had been naturally thin all her life (until she had
two children, she points out) and suffered repeated accusations of
anorexia as well as being branded 'toothpick,' 'boobless,' and a 'stick
figure.'

'I ate four large meals a day,
numerous snacks, and spent several months on weight gain shakes so the
name calling would stop. It didn’t,' she recalls.

Clash: Ms Chui (right) wrote a rebuttal to Mrs Bradley-Colleary's (left) petition, arguing that banning thin models isn't the answer and that we should be demanding all body types to be represented instead

Ms Chui admits that being thin did 'open doors' to a short but lucrative career as a fashion model and tells MailOnline that she 'absolutely' misses her naturally skinny days.

However, as she struggles to feel completely comfortable with her post-baby body, she doesn't blame the media for making her feel pressured.

'Banning thin models and calling them anorexic isn’t the answer. Thin-ness isn’t the enemy – exclusivity is,' she argues. 'Instead of banning one body type, we should instead be demanding all body types.'

She pointed to Dove as one of the companies leading the departure from favoring 'a certain body type' to include women of all shapes and sizes, and believes the industry is changing.

Banning thin models and calling them
anorexic isn’t the answer. Instead of banning one body type, we should instead be
demanding all body types.

Ms Chui sparked a heated debate on what Mrs Bradley-Colleary described as her 'skinny bashing', with many readers hitting back at her standpoint.

'You look sickly and bony and if others try to emulate you they run the risk of becoming sick too,' commented another.

Ms Chiu subsequently wrote a follow up piece on her blog, Mommy Nani Booboo and she stood her ground.

'Dissecting and judging someone else's body, and then using that to pass judgement on them and their life as a whole should not be acceptable,' she wrote, suggesting that this was not taking the right path toward 'promoting healthy body image.'

Ever since waifish supermodel Kate Moss exploded onto the scene in the late nineties with her lean 'heroin-chic' aesthetic, a new standard was born and the debate on what should be acceptable in the fashion industry has raged ever since.

Following intense pressure, there have been repeated efforts in the past on behalf on key fashion influencers to buck the accusations that they are irresponsibly leading young women into eating disorders.

Victoria Beckham banned size zero models from her New York show in 2010, while the Italian fashion houses Armani, Prada and Versace have all said they have done the same.

Waifish: Kate Moss, pictured here in 1992, sparked the long-enduring skinny trend when she first hit supermodel stardom, causing a debate that has raged for decades

And in 2012 Vogue editors from across the
globe, led by Anna Wintour, pledged to ban the use of models under 16
in photo shoots and promised not to use models they know to be suffering
from eating disorders.

Still, true to form, this year's New York Fashion Week featured a number of excruciatingly thin models, including Australia's Next Top Model winner, 21-year-old Cassi Van Den Dungen, who faced a bitter backlash for her noticeably gaunt appearance at Alex Perry's Autumn/Winter show.

In line with Ms Chui, the model hit back at her critics, posting a photo to her Instagram account yesterday of her breakfast, which included two butter croissants and a banana.

'Love my job, love food, I am who I am, deal with it' [sic] she wrote alongside it.

In the case of Mrs Bradley-Colleary's
blog post on the Saint Laurent ad, the writer later tweaked her rhetoric 'in order to be more
respectful to the model in the photo' - but the petition stands.

'I still think my petition has value and is important for the 99 per cent of women who are not underweight in America,' she writes.

As for relationship between the opposing friends and bloggers, Ms Chui says to MailOnline: 'I think Shannon and I share the same goal, which is to see a wider range of bodies represented in the fashion industry and media.'

Just under 5,000 more signatures are required for Mrs Bradley-Colleary to reach her target of 50,000, and she says that if she is successful in her mission, she intends to begin a movement to get all advertisers to use healthy woman, 'one ad campaign at a time.'